Best Stanley Kubrick movie

I watched Killer's Kiss during the ILX downtime -- the acting is poor, but there are moments of real brilliance in there! The fight in the mannequin storeroom is creepy, the rooftop chase prior to that is well staged (and has a couple of funny pratfalls as well). The most omg wtf lol moment was Davey's nightmare, since it used an effect that Kubrick came back to in 2001.

Watched the Criterion DVD of Spartacus, which I likely haven't seen since its early '90s restoration ... the Rome stuff is so much better than the slave scenes (which was apparently Dalton Trumbo's complaint on seeing the rough cut). Some pretty terrible acting too (John Dall, most of Tony Curtis, the gorgeously wooden John Gavin), tho the Brits rule the roost.

But yeah, anyone who thinks this is much of "a Kubrick film," whaaa? SK:

"I tried with only limited success to make the film as (historically) real as possible but I was up against a pretty dumb script which was rarely faithful to what is known about Spartacus. History tells us that he twice led his victorious slave army to the northern borders of Italy, and could quite easily have gotten out of the country. But he didn't, and instead he led his army back to pillage Roman cities. What the reasons were for this might have been the most interesting question the film might have pondered. Did the intentions of the rebellion change? Did Spartacus lose control of his leaders who by now may have been more interested in the spoils of war than in freedom? In the film, Spartacus was prevented from escape by the silly contrivance of a pirate leader who reneged on a deal to take the slave army away in his ships. If I ever needed any convincing of the limits of persuasion a director can have on a film where someone else is the producer and he is merely the highest-paid member of the crew, then Spartacus provided proof to last a lifetime."

morbs where do you rate lolita on your personal list?

You mean the slaves-in-Rome vs. the slaves-free scenes? I actually thought the best scenes were anything to do with that slave salesman, and the lead-up-to and fight and aftermath with the black slave, especially that minute where they just look at each other.

yes, Woody Strode always awesome. But no, I meant the political machinations btwn Laughton and Olivier, tho Ustinov's (the slave/gladiator trader) ham is at its most digestible.

Lolita is fine second-tier Kubrick, the main problem being he should've made it 10 years later w/ greater thematic freedom.

all of these movies are good.

Poll results pretty much as I'd rank them. I would probably have Paths of Glory above Barry Lyndon for 5th though.

S&S on the Lyndon adap:

Kubrick certainly put his stamp on the material. Thackeray's Europe is marked by bloody, corrupt politics, but Kubrick has no room for terrorist strikes against Irish landlords or German princes commissioning the murders of inconstant female dependents, or even Barry's self-serving term as a Member of Parliament. Thackeray's Barry yarns non-stop in the manner of George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman; O'Neal's Barry is reticent, and only tells stories to his son, most affectingly on the boy's deathbed. For the novelist, the duels are divertissements, opportunities for Barry to misrepresent himself as a fine fellow; Kubrick depicts a series of ritual conflicts, which the hero loses even if he happens to win. Barry's adventures in life start with the death of his father in a duel (in the novel, he drops dead at the races), and his wanderings begin when he prevails in a fake duel with Captain Quin (Leonard Rossiter), his rival for his cousin, and has to flee Ireland. Enlisted in the British army, he fights bare-knuckled with a huge bruiser (Pat Roach). Then, in alliance with the Chevalier (Patrick Magee), he collects gambling debts with a sword. His chastisement of the shrill Bullingdon prompts a campaign of insolence that escalates into a horrific beating administered in public on slippery wood floors, a scene that snaps cinematographer John Alcott out of poised, perfect, tracking shots into a flurry of ugly, close, handheld work. Last is the irony-laden duel with Bullingdon, as a good turn earns Barry a crippling reward. Dialogue exchanges, with a bespectacled highwayman or a canny German officer, are similarly cut-and-thrust, and tend to find Barry the loser....

Michael Hordern's narration is a constant presence, at once soothing and peppery.... Writing his screenplay without a credited novelist to assist him, Kubrick simply tweaks sentences from Thackeray so that Barry's self-exposing asides become the objective, mildly regretful observations of, basically, God. A note about a soldier's widow who is, like nearby towns, "taken and retaken several times" during a campaign is self-justifying waffle in Barry's mouth, but coming from Hordern, a more authoritative voice even than the carping Fitz-Boodle, it is a mean-spirited writing-off of a minor character....

http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/feature/49516

was the ending of paths of glory mandated by the studio? seemed like it would have been more kubrickian for him to have ended it with the soldiers just laughing and hooting

it was not. His producing partner, James Harris, said SK came to him w/ the ending late and his reaction was "Stanley, you can't end it with your girlfriend singing!" But he did.

The singer became Mrs Kubrick for the next 42 years.